Collectible card games (CCGs), also called trading card games (TCGs) or customizable card games (a phrase specific to two Decipher, Inc. games), are played using specially designed sets of cards. While trading cards have been around for much longer, CCGs combine the appeal of collecting and strategic game play.

Prior to 2000, most trading card games were named "collectible card games", and Decipher, Inc.--whether to draw distinction, or to denote more elaborate design--used its own term "customizable card game" (whose acronym still resolves to "CCG"). Starting with the Pokemon Trading Card Game in 1998, the phrase "Trading Card Game" was used much more frequently with anime and youth-oriented properties, and is generally chosen from a marketing standpoint to appeal to parents holding purchasing power, or to denote newer game design principles.

The first collectible card game was The Gathering, designed by Richard Garfield, published by Wizards of the Coast in 1993.